


Soonest Mended

by AMarguerite



Category: Persuasion - Jane Austen
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28624071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: For one sentence prompt fic, middlemarch gave me, "She held the linen of the fourth shirt she'd mended that day and thought, quite seriously, that she might scream."Sophia Croft does not understand how she could send her brother to sea with twenty four shirts, and have him come back with twenty all wrecked from battle.
Comments: 33
Kudos: 155





	Soonest Mended

**Author's Note:**

  * For [middlemarch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/gifts).



She held the linen of the fourth shirt she'd mended that day and thought, quite seriously, that she might scream. It wasn’t, thought Sophia, as she stared through a great jagged rent in Frederick’s shirt, that she minded the task of mending any more than any other. Indeed, she even quite liked mending when the Captain was sitting near her in his cabin, and they were talking over other captains’ battles (and fighting them a great deal more successfully than those captains ever had). And to sit here in her warm, cozy lodgings in Plymouth with her husband and her brother lingering at the breakfast table behind her, debating whether the gale raging outside would last the rest of the day, was a dear and rare comfort. 

But Sophia could not keep her temper over the fact that she had sent her youngest brother to sea with two dozen shirts and  _ twenty of them  _ were in states similar to the one in her hands. 

_ Fourteen of them _ had been new made when he set off on the Asp, and  _ all four and twenty _ had been freshly washed and mended, as Sophia knew and knew well the difficulty of washing linen at sea. She had not had time to make all the shifts she had wished to take to Gibraltar, because of the time spent cutting fabric to Frederick’s pattern card and feverishly plying her needle. The Captain— who had had only an old aunt, not much used to the sea, to make his shirts before he married— had joked Sophia must be outfitting the whole sloop at the rate she was going. 

As Frederick had always been her particular pet (she silently but ruefully apologized to middle brother Edward) Sophia at first tried to cast blame elsewhere. Frederick had been on a sloop and probably had not the space for an assigned servant— surely no one repaired these— no. Sophia sent down one shirt and picked up another. Someone had clearly made efforts to repair some of them. Perhaps the laundress, rushing to get the dried shirts back before the gale, had torn the linen in her haste? But... no. When Sophia dug through the basket to find one of the Captain’s shirts, it was in the same, good condition as when she had sent it out to be washed. 

Sophia pulled out every shirt belonging to Frederick in the basket. Bullet holes, powder burns, cuts and tears of all description—

“Frederick,” she called out, in the tones she’d learnt to use while enemy canon roared across the deck. 

It had its effect. Frederick hopped to attention and seemed almost baffled to find himself saluting Sophia with butter knife still in hand. The Captain smiled to himself, hands linked across his stomach. 

“What on  _ earth  _ were you doing in the West Indies?” she cried. “There is not a shirt here that is fit to be worn. I should do much better to cut them all into handkerchiefs than to try and mend them. Did you take on every privateer yourself?”

“I had a run of luck,” said Frederick, rather too evasively. 

“You had far too many  _ run-ins _ ,” said Sophia, severely. “What, were you trying to get yourself killed?”

There was something Sophia did not like in Frederick’s expression— a flash of something dark, a sense of pain steeped too long, steeped to bitterness— but then perhaps it was only the storm outside, as it rattled the windows and sent a new patter of droplets sizzling on the fire. When she looked away from the fire, Frederick merely spread his hands, with his usual devil-may-care fashion. “I have no wife to keep me nice, Sophia, and often my man was too busy with his regular duties to see to my linens, and I was—”

“Too injured to mend your own shirts?” Sophia asked severely.

“Come Sophia, the lad is perfectly healthy,” objected the Captain. “You see for yourself he has his all his limbs still. And all his teeth.”

They flashed in a grin now. “My thanks, sir, for this quick defensive action.”

“Sophia’s never had to rough it on a sloop,” said the Captain. 

“Phoo! Phoo!” said Sophia. “You take too many risks, Frederick.”

Frederick protested, “It’s hardly that Sophia—”

“You take too little care, then,” said Sophia. “The next ship you get, Frederick, you had better take a wife with you.”

“What, only to see to my linens?” Frederick had always been a good-looking boy and now knew he was handsome— which often resulted in an air and a manner that made Sophia wish to box his ears like she had when they were children. The air and manner were in full, peacocking display he sat back down now, and gestured to himself. “A bad bargain for the lady, Sophia, and to have to live with this besides... on a  _ sloop _ ! No, if ever I marry, I should not make any poor creature stoop to such indignities.”

“No, you shall only make your sister sew a dozen new shirts for you every year,” said Sophia. “I hope you grow out of this by the time you are married, or I shall pity your poor wife til the day I die.”

“You shall be waiting a long time then,” said Frederick. There had been something in his tone— something sharp, something strained— that made Sophia wonder just what she had missed while abroad, but then Frederick smiled ruefully at her and extended his hand with all his usual open-hearted practicality. “Oh, let’s leave off fighting as if we were children again. Give me a needle. It hasn’t been so long since I had to help mend a torn sail and it isn’t fair to you, asking you alone to fix the result of my own folly.”

“Give me a needle too, Sophia,” said the Captain. “You know this reminds me when  _ I  _ was first in the West Indies—”

The wind howled outside, but Sophia entirely forgot it, warmed as she was by the company of two of the people dearest in the world to her, all united together in their shared task.


End file.
